by liberal japonicus
You know what to do.
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
by liberal japonicus
You know what to do.
Many of you have no doubt seen stories about the ballot problem in Colorado. Due to a communications problem** some 800,000 people have received mail ballots that nominally allow them to vote on a ballot issue they are not eligible for.
As it turns out, every mail ballot has a precinct number on it. There is an official list of which precincts are allowed to vote on the tax. One of the capabilities that all counties are required to implement is to exclude ballots on a contest based on precinct filtering. In practice, there will be insignificant delays in reporting results and any problems will be caught in the state’s risk-limiting audit.
** It’s a special district tax issue. The head of the special district has already taken responsibility for the failure to get the information out to the four (of thirteen***) affected counties.
*** So far as I can tell, the four either took no proactive steps, or took minimal ones (we sent an e-mail but didn’t hear back). Based on my time on state legislature’s staff and having to deal with counties, I suspect the other nine were on the phone every day**** until they got answers.
**** When I made a presentation to the Joint Budget Committee and recommended actions affecting counties — the audio for those presentations was streamed live on the internet — I ignored my phone for the next hour. Walked over to the Mall and had lunch, or a snack. By then I was able to listen and not take it personally.
I’m wondering what are people’s predictions for the midterms, both the mundane points about winning and losing, but also the p(doom) calculations. Seeing Michael’s comment, I’m thinking that Trump and his inner circle is int the process of letting loose his flying monkeys to just make the whole thing the whole process of declaring winners opaque. Not saying that the ballot mixup in Colorado is a Trump plot, but it seems that getting enough of these low level events to screw things up would be a viable strategy.
Jamelle Bouie (it’s one of his takes, but I don’t see it in my youtube) where he argues that the mechanisms for the election are so far too large and numerous for Trump’s current crew, for whom competence is akin to protozoa wearing gloves, to manage. But that ignores the possiblity of an accumulation of small screw-ups to try and create a situation where Trump will have purchase to demand federalization. Bouie thinks this is nonsense, but maybe because I’m far away, I’m not too sanguine about the whole thing.